T-Mobile US Inc. gained 1.4 million of the most lucrative
wireless customers in the third quarter, but the cost of winning
those gains hurt its margins.
The results extended a streak of strong growth for the carrier
that kicked off the U.S. wireless industry's long-running price
battle. The U.S. wireless carrier has added more than 5.6 million
customers since the beginning of 2013 in a saturated industry with
little real subscriber growth.
The report also keeps alive questions about how T-Mobile, the
smallest of the four U.S. nationwide wireless carriers, can
continue to post gains against better capitalized rivals.
T-Mobile's executives themselves spent much of the past year
arguing the merits of getting bigger amid talks to merge with rival
Sprint Corp. The results late Monday were the first since Sprint
ended merger talks in early August and French wireless company
Iliad SA dropped a takeover offer for T-Mobile earlier this
month.
T-Mobile, which is majority-owned by Deutsche Telekom AG,
reported a third-quarter net loss of $94 million, or 12 cents a
share, compared with a loss of $36 million, or 5 cents a share, a
year earlier. Revenue rose about 10% to $7.35 billion.
The company said Monday that it had higher selling, general and
administrative costs in the quarter, along with higher losses on
equipment sales.
Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had projected a per-share
profit of two cents and revenue of $7.4 billion.
The company's churn, or monthly service cancellations, fell to
1.6%, from 1.7% a year ago.
Write to Thomas Gryta at thomas.gryta@wsj.com
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